Tunis, Tunisia – Tunisia’s authorities have sharply intensified strain on civil society, prosecuting activists and NGO staff, investigating teams’ funds and suspending dozens of associations in a marketing campaign that Human Rights Watch says has severely narrowed the civic house that emerged after the 2011 revolution.
In a 49-page report launched on Wednesday, the rights group documented what it described as escalating repression of native and worldwide civil society organisations, their staff and associates by way of arrests, prolonged preventive detention, legal and monetary investigations, mass suspensions and threats of dissolution.
Human Rights Watch stated authorities have prosecuted no less than 47 individuals related to nongovernmental organisations and held no less than 10 individuals in preventive detention for longer than 14 months, exceeding the utmost interval permitted underneath Tunisian legislation.
After trials in 2025 and 2026, no less than 14 individuals related to civil society have been convicted and sentenced to jail, the rights group stated.
Amongst them is distinguished human rights defender Saadia Mosbah, who was sentenced to eight years in jail and a heavy positive on monetary crime expenses on March 19, in line with the report.
5 workers of organisations helping asylum seekers have additionally been convicted on expenses linked to their work and the mandates of their legally registered associations, Human Rights Watch stated. The organisations have since ceased their actions.
How has the strain widened?
The crackdown has prolonged past particular person activists to organisations engaged on a number of the nation’s most politically delicate points, significantly migration.
From Could to December 2024, authorities arrested a number of staff at teams offering help to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in addition to individuals working to fight racism and discrimination, in line with Human Rights Watch.
The arrests had been made when tensions had been heightened over the remedy of sub-Saharan Africans in Tunisia.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied stated the presence of sub-Saharan refugees and migrants was a part of a “legal plan” to vary Tunisia’s demographic composition and described it as a type of “occupation”.
Human Rights Watch stated authorities have used legal guidelines criminalising help to foreigners with irregular immigration standing and Tunisia’s 2015 “counterterrorism” and money-laundering legislation to deliver what the rights group described as abusive expenses towards human rights defenders and staff at NGOs.
The strain has additionally taken a monetary type.
On the finish of 2024, shortly earlier than the presidential election, the Tax Evasion Investigation and Prevention Brigade notified no less than a dozen associations, together with Amnesty Worldwide’s regional workplace and the anticorruption group I Watch, that they had been underneath investigation, in line with Human Rights Watch.
The investigations created an administrative and operational burden and resulted within the freezing of no less than two associations’ financial institution accounts, the rights group stated.
Personal banks have additionally imposed restrictions on some associations, together with revoking their entry to arduous forex or convertible dinar accounts, blocking or returning international funds despatched to Tunisian accounts, or closing their accounts.
Human Rights Watch stated the widespread use of such investigations raised considerations that the authorities had been utilizing monetary and legal procedures to intimidate civil society organisations.
Why are associations being suspended?
Authorities have additionally moved towards organisations collectively.
From July to October 2025 and once more from April to Could this 12 months, authorities used Decree-Legislation 2011-88 on associations to droop organisations, Human Rights Watch stated.
The rights group recognized no less than 20 suspended civil society associations whereas noting that the precise quantity couldn’t be established with out official information.
Human Rights Watch stated the suspensions had been marked by procedural irregularities. Some associations didn’t obtain the formal warnings required underneath Tunisian legislation whereas others tried to reply however obtained no reply.
Attorneys supporting suspended organisations instructed the rights group that officers had dismissed appeals from about 30 associations.
The teams face a severe threat of dissolution as soon as all avenues of enchantment have been exhausted, Human Rights Watch stated.
Al Khatt, which publishes the unbiased on-line journal Inkyfada, and the antiracism organisation Mnemty are presently dealing with dissolution proceedings, in line with the report.
The judiciary, which orders the suspensions, has been underneath the management of the chief since 2022 when Saied took expansive measures that Human Rights Watch stated undermined judicial independence.
Associations have additionally reported being denied accreditation to watch elections, dealing with tighter restrictions on entry to prisons and detention services, and having public occasions banned, in line with Human Rights Watch.
Is the strain altering how individuals converse?
For activists, the impression is more and more felt earlier than authorities take motion: in choices about whether or not to talk, organise or work publicly in any respect.
Rabie Kacem, a member of the Nafas civic collective, stated the considerations raised by Human Rights Watch mirrored what activists have been experiencing.
“At the moment, an activist or anybody interested by public affairs in Tunisia thinks twice earlier than talking, writing or organising an exercise,” Kacem stated.
“We’re speaking about an atmosphere the place civic and human rights work itself has turn into linked to the opportunity of being prosecuted, defamed or pressured.”
The strain has additionally affected journalists documenting occasions.
Noureddine Ahmed, a photojournalist and president of the photojournalists committee inside Tunisia’s Nationwide Journalists Union, stated restrictions on journalists had turn into extra pronounced over the previous 5 years.
Journalists more and more have been stopped whereas working within the streets, requested to indicate skilled identification or get hold of permits earlier than chatting with residents, and typically taken to police stations for questioning, he stated. In some instances, he stated, journalists have had their gear broken or confiscated.
Reporting on migration has turn into significantly delicate, Ahmed stated, and a few international media organisations have turn into extra reluctant to work with Tunisian journalists on migration and political tales.
He stated monitoring of journalists’ social media exercise and restricted entry to info had contributed to a wider local weather of concern.
Ahmed estimated that the variety of photojournalists has fallen by about half as some misplaced work and a few international media organisations grew to become much less prepared to take accountability for native correspondents amid the chance of arrest or prosecution.
“There isn’t any freedom of the press in Tunisia now,” Ahmed stated.
Wissem Sghaier, spokesperson for Al-Jomhouri Celebration, stated the prosecutions had been a part of a broader disaster involving the steadiness of powers, judicial independence and freedom of expression.
He stated the focus of political decision-making within the fingers of Saied has weakened the separation of powers and allowed state establishments for use to implement political choices.
“When there may be an atmosphere characterised by assaults on freedoms, arrests, persecution and focusing on each totally different voice, it’s regular that some voices don’t need to put themselves in jail,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
What modified after the 2011 revolution?
The strain is especially important in a rustic the place civil society expanded dramatically after the 2011 rebellion that ended the rule of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Associations, rights teams and unbiased organisations grew to become an vital a part of Tunisia’s political and social panorama, documenting abuses, helping susceptible communities and offering residents with new methods to problem authorities.
That house narrowed sharply after Saied took sweeping political measures in July 2021, suspending parliament, dismissing the federal government and starting to rule by decree.
Since 2022, Saied has publicly portrayed civil society and NGOs as a risk to nationwide sovereignty, Human Rights Watch stated.
Saied and his authorities have defended his political measures as essential to combat corruption and shield Tunisia from what they describe as conspiracies and makes an attempt to destabilise the nation.
Human Rights Watch, nonetheless, stated the authorities have more and more used authorized and administrative measures to limit unbiased organisations and their members.
What occurs subsequent?
Human Rights Watch stated the Tunisian authorities have repeatedly sought to exchange or tighten the authorized framework governing associations.
Two draft legal guidelines, one leaked in early 2022 and one other submitted to parliament in October 2023, would give the federal government important management over the institution, actions, operations and funding of unbiased organisations, in line with the rights group.
It referred to as on Tunisian authorities to finish abusive investigations, judicial harassment and what it described because the criminalisation of official civil society work.
The organisation additionally referred to as for the discharge of NGO staff, activists and human rights defenders it considers arbitrarily detained in reference to their official work and for convictions it considers unjust to be overturned.
It urged parliament to withdraw laws that will undermine freedom of affiliation and referred to as on the European Union and its member states to press Tunisia to finish the crackdown.
Tunisia is get together to the Worldwide Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Constitution on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which shield the freedoms of affiliation, meeting and expression in addition to safeguards towards arbitrary arrest and detention and ensures of a good trial.
“By dismantling the house for civil society, the authorities are attempting to make sure nobody is left to carry them accountable,” stated Bassam Khawaja, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Center East and North Africa director.
“The worldwide neighborhood must take pressing motion to assist protect what stays of civic house in Tunisia, guarantee protections for rights defenders and finish this drastic backsliding on human rights.”
